The Language of “Welfare Dependency” and “Benefit Cheats”: Internalising and Reproducing the Hegemonic and Discursive Rhetoric of “Benefit Scroungers”

TY - CHAP

T1 - The Language of “Welfare Dependency” and “Benefit Cheats”

T2 - Internalising and Reproducing the Hegemonic and Discursive Rhetoric of “Benefit Scroungers”

AU - Roberts, Christopher

N1 - Chris Roberts is a Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Media and Culture at the University of Roehampton, London. His research is usually oriented around media representation(s) of conflict, “business”, politics and capital. He is a critical discourse analyst. His PhD is entitled “The Appropriation of ‘the dramatic’ in contemporary British Current Affairs broadcasting: Narrative and Characterisation tropes, Critical Discourse Analysis [CDA] of Panorama’s coverage of the Iraq War”.

PY - 2017/8/30

Y1 - 2017/8/30

N2 - This chapter is oriented around the notion that the language and narrative[s] of “welfare” and/or “benefit cheats” is not only ideologically problematic and regressive, but that the lay-person’s large-scale adoption and internalisation of its logic as “common sense”, and that they/we are seemingly willing to act as surveillance agents on the “undeserving” presents significant obstacles to those seeking to challenge this narrative. Undertaking a multi-modal semiotic discourse analysis of the elite centred/led 2008 DWP “infomercial” “Benefit Thieves, We’re Closing in” the case will be made that the vision and version of “benefit cheats” presented by the infomercial sets a precedent through which much subsequent public discussion of benefits and welfare is refracted. In the latter stages of the chapter I outline that having laid the foundations and reproduced the epistemology of undeserving welfare claimants and “benefit cheats” via the infomercial(s), the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) provides perfect cover for state actors to institute a series of ever-more regressive welfare “reforms” The chapter seeks to ask the following question[s]: What are the languages and discourses used to describe recipients of welfare? How does the rhetoric of “benefit cheats” proffered by the DWP Infomercial encourage the wider population to (self)identify and locate (them)ourselves in the dominant discourse? Are they/we persuaded to accept a regressive ideological narrative [not in “our” interests] and if so, do such discourses and narratives maintain and reproduce socio-economic hegemony? To what extent are “we” persuaded to accept and perform a political subjectivity and to monitor a perceived “problem population” (Connor 2007) through individual[ised] forms of surveillance?

AB - This chapter is oriented around the notion that the language and narrative[s] of “welfare” and/or “benefit cheats” is not only ideologically problematic and regressive, but that the lay-person’s large-scale adoption and internalisation of its logic as “common sense”, and that they/we are seemingly willing to act as surveillance agents on the “undeserving” presents significant obstacles to those seeking to challenge this narrative. Undertaking a multi-modal semiotic discourse analysis of the elite centred/led 2008 DWP “infomercial” “Benefit Thieves, We’re Closing in” the case will be made that the vision and version of “benefit cheats” presented by the infomercial sets a precedent through which much subsequent public discussion of benefits and welfare is refracted. In the latter stages of the chapter I outline that having laid the foundations and reproduced the epistemology of undeserving welfare claimants and “benefit cheats” via the infomercial(s), the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) provides perfect cover for state actors to institute a series of ever-more regressive welfare “reforms” The chapter seeks to ask the following question[s]: What are the languages and discourses used to describe recipients of welfare? How does the rhetoric of “benefit cheats” proffered by the DWP Infomercial encourage the wider population to (self)identify and locate (them)ourselves in the dominant discourse? Are they/we persuaded to accept a regressive ideological narrative [not in “our” interests] and if so, do such discourses and narratives maintain and reproduce socio-economic hegemony? To what extent are “we” persuaded to accept and perform a political subjectivity and to monitor a perceived “problem population” (Connor 2007) through individual[ised] forms of surveillance?

KW - Benefits

KW - DWP;

KW - Welfare;

KW - “Benefit Scroungers”

KW - Media

KW - Discourse

KW - Hegemony

M3 - Chapter

SN - 978-3-319-57568-1

SP - 189

BT - The Language of Money and Debt

PB - Palgrave Macmillan

ER -